…check out today’s New York Daily News, which reportsthat NATO blames Mullah Omar for the mortaring of civilians this week. Last month, Omar “instructed his commanders to capture and kill any Afghan supporting or working for coalition forces.”

The fact that Omar was roaming freely in June and coordinating attacks must be an awful shock to readers of Breitbart’s Big Government.

Back in May, Instaputz reminds us, Andrew Breitbart’s site was the focus of considerable attention when it announced that Mullah Omar had been arrested in Pakistan. The source was thriller writer Brad Thor, who supposedly has contacts from Afghanistan, and there was much crowing over how the site had scooped the mainstream media. The story provoked lots of debate, and not just along liberal versus conservative lines: Jeremy Scahill at the Nation tentatively suggested that there might be something in it, while David Horowitz’s Newsrealblog was not impressed. Doubters, however, were mocked when Oliver North supposedly confirmed the story. Two and a half months on, though, no evidence has leaked out, and statements from NATO and Pakistan all suggest that the Mullah is still at large.

Thor, whom I previously blogged here, has recently provided a blurb (alongside Geert Wilders) for Pamela Geller’s new book about how Obama is a Communist; Thor makes a point of referencing Obama’s middle name in his endorsement.

And while we’re on the subject of Breitbart, here’s his famous confrontation with Max Blumenthal at CPAC (5:38 0nwards) in the wake of this article. Breitbart admonishes Max that unfairly “accusing a person of racism is the worst thing that you can do”:

(A couple of other cross-references: Blumenthal has also clashed with Geller, as I blogged here; the above video also features Hannah Giles, who is now more famous than her father, whom I used to blog about way back)

So, based on Bartholomew and Media Matters, who both picked up the meme from something called Instaputz, we’re to believe that Omar is not only free, but that he has done a complete 180 from eleven months ago and now doesn’t care how many Afghans get splashed? In fact, he’s actively encouraging the Taliban to toss out last summer’s “Code of Conduct” and slaughter them? I guess with Instaputz, Bartholomew, and Media Matters on the scene, the rest of the milblogging community can finally hang up their cleats. The cavalry has arrived!

What’s truly laughable isn’t that these bloggers (with no apparent military, intelligence, COIN, PsyOps or I.O. knowledge) are suddenly blogging about these issues, but that the left is so desperate to smear Breitbart that they’ll now cite the same brave military they so despise and distrust as proof that they’re right.

I have said it before and I will say it here again. Mullah Omar is in Pakistani custody. You can take it to the bank. Don’t believe me? See the growing list below (which none of the three bloggers above fully cited). Lefty journalism is only fun after all when you can selectively attack sources. Behold the utter nihilism of the left – available at a progressive website near you.

This is bluster, although it’s nice to see my somewhat obscure blog being bracketed with Media Matters, and fun to see it cited by a best-selling author, even though I don’t care for his view of the world (that must be my “utter nihilism”, I suppose). Of course I don’t “despise” the military and I’ve never written anything which suggests I do. And I’m happy to concede that it’s possible that Omar has been captured and that the letter is a fake; I certainly don’t know anything more about Mullah Omar’s whereabouts or circumstances than any other member of the general public – and neither does Instaputz: the point is the information from NATO via the NY Daily News, not how many bloggers are commenting on it or their political perspectives.

But, as I wrote above, it’s now nearly three months since Thor’s original post, and if the story is accurate, it is extraordinary that no details have leaked out and that the only named person on record as having heard about it from a first hand source is a conservative thriller writer with links to virulent anti-Islam activists like Pamela Geller. My lack of “military, intelligence, COIN, PsyOps or I.O. knowledge” and Thor’s self-proclaimed expertise in such matters is neither here nor there.

Also, no-one is currently “desperate to smear Breitbart”: over the past week the man has destroyed his own credibility with very little assistance from critics.

[…] exists in audio-book form narrated by none other than thriller-writer Brad Thor; back in July Thor attacked this blog by name for “utter nihilism” when I noted some doubts being expressed about his […]

My Book Reviews

Note on Attacks

Anyone who comments on current affairs on-line risks being smeared by attack sites and/or abusive Tweets. This is particularly so if one chooses to challenge dishonesty or other kinds of reprehensible behaviour.

As a result of making a stand in a few particular instances, I have become the focus of a number of such attacks. Those who have targeted me include: a Nigerian evangelist who believes in “child witches”; former activists with the EDL; a man with a long history of bad debt and grandiosity; a sockpuppeting tabloid journalist; and a self-serving “celebrity” MP who deploys smears to discourage scrutiny.

The bad faith of such sites and Tweets ought to be self-evident. However, any readers interested in the true background can read this and this.